Ever since four-door coupes became a dime a dozen, the European auto industry has been looking for a new niche, and for much of the past year or so, it seemed that the next big thing would be “small premium.” Inspired by the MINI, European automakers from Alfa to Audi have been trying to get consumers to spend big money on tiny, plush cars. But with Audi’s A1 starting at €15,800 ($20,873), it seems that even the efficiency-happy Germans aren’t willing to pay the price of entry for this new niche. Audi built capacity for 100k A1s at its Brussels plant, but since introducing the car in August, Audi has sold only 20k of the pricey subcompacts. And yes, the slow sales do seem to be tied to the exorbitant pricetags.

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We’ve been slacking a bit on our sales analysis over the last few months, but with the end of the year rapidly approaching we’re getting ready to look back at a year of sales, statistics and trends. To catch you up on the evolving US market sales picture, we now present the top six sellers in each of the six most important segments. Midsized and compact sedans, midsized and compact crossovers, pickups and “luxury low” (better known as “3 Series Fighters”) are all represented with today’s wide but shallow snapshot of car sales in 2010. Will the Sonata pass Malibu this year? Having beaten the Toyota Highlander, will Subaru’s Outback take down the Honda Pilot? Will the CR-V hold off the Escape? Best And Brightest, this is your cue to start prepping those year-end sales analysis talking points…

Volkswagen has announced that its 256 HP, AWD Golf R is coming to the US market just like the R32 and other über-Golfs before it. And though switching the enthusiast’s Golf from a V6 to a turbo-four was the right decision, there’s just one minor problem: this Golf has competition. Subaru’s WRX may not be the prettiest car out there, but it offers 265 turbocharged horsepower to the Golf R’s 256, and it starts at a budget-basement $25,500. Previous R-badged Golfs have cost upwards of $30k, or approaching the $34k, 305 HP WRX STI. Of course the Golf R does have some advantages: an optional dual-clutch transmission, a cleaner look, a European badge… but in addition to having less horsepower than a WRX, it weighs a good 100 pounds more. In short, the Golf R may be manna from heaven for Volkswagen fans who are disappointed in the new Jetta, but it’s not exactly going to turn America’s performance market upside down.

When GM introduced the Chevrolet Cruze to the market some three months ago, it wasn’t just launching a car, it was trying to change one of its most persistent perception problems. GM managers know that their firm has never built a memorably successful compact car, a fact that was underlined by President Obama’s bailout-era question “why can’t they build a Corolla?” The Cruze was supposed to change all that, but a short three months after its launch, even the hometown cheerleaders at the Detroit Free Press are beginning to wonder if GM is “running out of time to kick Cruze sales into high gear.” After all, the Cruze was just fifth on the C-Segment sales chart last month, losing out to such aging offerings as the Civic, Corolla, Focus and Elantra, all of which are due to be replaced within the next 3 to 12 months. And since the Crue took its time getting to the US market, one analyst concludes

As a result of having been in production two years, it will age more quickly. The relevance in the market is one of the things consumers are willing to pay premium for

This seems to reinforce the conclusion drawn by the WSJ’s Dan Neil who wrote of the Cruze

But I’m sorry to say Chevrolet’s compact car of tomorrow feels more like its car of this afternoon, about 3:48 p.m. This is a car of quickly expiring market advantages.

According to Acura’s press release:

On sale at Acura dealerships on November 23, the 2011 TSX sedan with 2.4L I-4 engine has an MSRP of $29,610 for both manual and automatic transmission models. Equipped with the available Technology package, the MSRP is $32,710. The TSX sedan with 3.5L V-6 engine has an MSRP of $35,150, or $38,250 when equipped with the Technology Package.

The 2011 TSX Sport Wagon goes on sale December 21 with a base price of $30,960. When equipped with the available Technology Package, the TSX Sport Sedan will have an MSRP of $34,610 [emphasis added].

But even if we ignore Acura’s confusing typo, there’s still plenty here to not understand. Why is the “Wagon Tax” $1,350 for standard TSX models, but $1,900 for Technology Package-equipped sportwagons? Put another way, why is technology $550 more for five the five-door models? And another thing: if there’s no price difference between the manual and automatic transmissions, why isn’t a manual transmission even an option on the Sportwagon? Why not put a price on the autobox and let Wagon buyers get their Technology Package for the same price as sedan buyers? Remember when things were simple in Acura pricing-land?

Earlier this year we took a look at our rolling 12-month sales totals chart, and found that cars had pulled away from “light trucks” (a category that includes trucks, SUVs, minivans and crossovers), prompting us to proclaim The Great American Downsizing. Well, it turns out we opined too soon. Trucks closed out the Summer strong and went on a tear during the Autumn months, to pull back to parity with their car cousins. And because light trucks are trending upwards faster than cars, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see them finish the year as the better-selling segment. Of course, these numbers aren’t being driven strictly by the old-school utes of yore, although old standbys like the full-sized pickups, the Yukon XL and Ford Expedition are all up by healthy margins. Between old-school utes and the large crossovers that are replacing them, the cars just don’t stand a chance. Hit the jump for car-versus-light truck sales by manufacturer.

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In love with the 2011 VW Jetta? It’s tough to imagine, but I’ll certainly concede that it’s possible. Anyway, if you love the new Jetta, you won’t be able to stop yourself falling for its big brother, the forthcoming Passat-replacement. On the other hand, if you think the new Jetta looks like a stock photograph of a vanilla ice cream cone, or if it inspires you as much as an insurance firm’s mission statement, this New Midsize Sedan might leave you a bit cold. On the other hand, there is a silver lining to the Passat’s blandification: Volkswagen has finally figured out how to make the Phaeton look like a distinctive, innovative, upscale design.

Though the US auto market is up 11 percent this year, Honda’s sales are up only 3.6 percent compared to last year’s weak performance. That means the Motor Company isn’t even keeping up with the growth rates of such maligned brands as Lincoln (+7.4%), Chrysler (+16%) and Mazda (+9.8%). But Team Honda isn’t sweating the details. After all, the Civic and CR-V are nearing the end of their model cycles, while the Accord is a year and a half from its replacement. And, as Honda USA’s Executive VP John Mendel tells Automotive News [sub], at Honda

GM raised a few eyebrows when it priced its new Cruze compact at or above the base price of its closest competitors, marking a shift upwards in its pricing strategy. But with loaded LTZ versions of the Cruze crossing the $24k mark, one obvious concern was cannibalization of the forthcoming Buick version of the Cruze, the Verano. GM has yet to officially announce pricing for the Verano, but an online survey of Buick dealers has leaked to GM Inside News, showing that GM is eying a price range of $21k-$26k for the new Verano, a price point that certainly overlaps with the higher-trim Cruze models. And with the 2.4 liter four-banger from the Regal tipped as the Verano’s base engine, the case for the similarly-engined (and not all that much larger) Regal is made a little less convincing by the addition of the new compact Buick. Hit the jump for GM’s proposed trim levels.

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The debate over Detroit’s bailout was dominated by a narrative that portrayed the automakers as victims of Wall Street excess, and placed blame for their collapse on the frozen credit market. And though the credit crunch certainly hurt GM and Chrysler as well as their customers, Detroit was a victim of the credit crunch in the same way an addict is a victim of his dealer. By leveraging easy credit to fuel the SUV boom which covered for unprofitability in passenger cars (or didn’t, as the case may be), Detroit binged on zero-percent financing as the market road confidently to 16m annual sales. And then, finally, the music stopped and the Domestics crumpled, victims of their own greed, but with a convenient scapegoat in the hated Wall Street bankers. But if the bailout was intended to not only get GM and Chrysler back on their feet but also to prevent future collapses, there’s some troubling news in the offing: subprime auto lending is starting to roar back, and if it goes unchecked, it could reach pre-recession levels in short order…

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In the wild, panthers are endangered. In the automotive world, Panthers will go extinct sometime in the third quarter of 2011, when the last Lincoln Town Car Executive L rolls off the line. If you think Panthers get a lot of lovin’ around these here parts, you should attend a convention of folks for whom those LTCELs are tools of the trade. Chances are that if you’ve used a limousine or livery service in the past 20 years, you’ve sat in the back seat of a Lincoln Town Car Executive L. That’s why it was big news at Limousine Charter & Tour magazine’s LCT Leadership Summit a couple of months ago when Ford’s fleet marketing manager, Gerry Koss, announced that replacing the soon to be dearly departed Town Car in Ford’s livery fleet fleet will be livery and stretched limo versions of the Lincoln MKT.

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Hyundai has been working its way out of the low-cost, low-quality basement for some time now, but even with the introduction of its Genesis luxury sedan, the brand has maintained a certain amount of working-class value appeal. That image has served Hyundai well over the last several years, when an economic downturn has sent record numbers of customers to Hyundai dealerships in search of a deal. But with a new upscale-looking design language transforming solid but uninspired offerings like the Sonata into memorable designs, Hyundai wasn’t likely to remain the scrappy, more-for-your-money underdog forever. And sure enough, Hyundai tells Automotive News [sub] that it’s getting away from the solid values of quality and practicality, and moving into the tenuous world of “premium” brand placement. Executive Vice President for global marketing Cho Won Hong explains

In the past 10 years, we have been very successful in building an image for quality. From now on, our direction will be defined as new premium or modern premium. We have been doing quite well in building good functional quality. But we still have some room to improve our emotional quality, and that is related to our brand strategy. That’s why we set modern premium as the brand direction for the next five to 10 years

For the last several years the 300C has been Chrysler’s band of Spartans, fighting off the apathy and irrelevance that has threatened to overwhelm the brand. And it didn’t just keep Chrysler clawing onto relevance, but it also revived an art form that was also circling the drain: the large, RWD American car. As Cadillac moved towards a sharply-tailored, Euro-fighter positioning, the 300 became the ride of choice for everyone from traditionalist suburbanites to ghetto CEOs. And now it’s back, and like its Charger cousin, the new 300 is a subtle, delicate thing compared to its rough-hewn, unabashedly Bentley-aping predecessor. But has a more sophisticated look actually improved the 300’s appeal? Will concessions to aerodynamics and originality inspire fans of the 300, or is progress a fundamental problem for a car that seems to live in the past? One thing is certain: Chrysler needs its 300 now as badly as it ever did. [Please surf over to Motor Trend for more non-official pictures]

VW claims its working on a new MicroBus, but there’s only one sliding-door VW that currently inspires real lust. With a Haldex 4Motion system, 30 mm of extra ground clearance, beefy rims, all-terrain tires, skid plates and an interior that puts the spar in spartan, the Transporter Rockton may have a silly name, but it’s ready to road trip to the most exotic and poorly-paved sections of the world. And with 180 and 140 HP versions of a two-liter diesel available, you’ll make efficient if somewhat slow progress. The only problem: prices start at €34,545 ($45,600+). Good thing you didn’t have time for that third-world road trip anyway…

Bloomberg reports that the world’s cheapest car, the Tata Nano has seen its sales drop from the point where it had to hold a lottery to choose buyers for its first 100k units to last month’s all-time low of only 509 units sold. Tata has raised the price twice this year, bumping the MSRP by 4 percent in July and then adding another $200 to the price in October. This, in addition to the Nano’s fire-related issues and the inability of Indian consumers to secure financing for the microcar is being blamed for the sales drop. Says Mahantesh Sabarad, an analyst with Fortune Equity Brokers (India) Ltd:

The product has had a difficult time in terms of its perception ever since those fire incidents came in. A lot of people bought the car in the initial sales period for its novelty factor and didn’t go for loans

Tata’s response: hire more sales staff and work with banks to secure loans for Nano customers. After all, the Indian automaker has 250k annual production capacity assigned to the Nano, so sales had better start picking up soon.